


Surprises

by petercapaldiscoiffure



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Solavellan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25250842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petercapaldiscoiffure/pseuds/petercapaldiscoiffure
Summary: It's unnerving, the way she looks at him. Just one more thing among many he had failed to anticipate, Solas thinks.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age)
Kudos: 21





	Surprises

**Author's Note:**

> I finally succumbed

It’s unnerving, the way she looks at him. Just one more thing among many he had failed to anticipate, Solas thinks wryly.

He has been awake in this world - this nightmare of his own making - for just one year and yet it has felt a lifetime. In that time, he has traveled across the red rock valleys of Nevarra, past fields of Marcher grain stretching so far they meet the horizon, through Fereldan forests ancient and yearling. Not once has anyone he’s met across all these lands truly _seen_ him. He shouldn’t fault them - this is by design, of course. He is dressed humbly, looks every bit the vagabond eccentric he pretends to be. But though millennia of experience certainly have their advantage when it comes to games of deception, in a certain respect it is disappointing that not even one of the Dalish had ever sensed something amiss beyond what they see as a lack of sense at best, outright heresy at worst. Not until now, at least.

The Dalish. That his orb and mark were taken by one of _the People_ feels almost like a jest, the irony of it is so thick. And this one is so proud, so protective of her own. In fairness, he cannot find it in himself to fault her for it. If there is anything that weighs heavy on his heart it is them, these self-proclaimed arbiters of history and tradition, holding fast to stories with as much truth to them as a child’s game of shadow puppets. Still, even as he feels endless remorse for what he has stolen from the land - the people - he once called home and loved above all else, he finds himself exasperated by what they have become, at times even disgusted, with himself as much as anyone. _May the Dread Wolf take you._ What a perversion, what a waste of what might have been. Even the revered _hahrens_ , for all they mutter over Fen'harel and hold to their superstitions and little statues, had never guessed him anything other than a madman and a fool. A threat, perhaps, but only a threat to their own comfort and closed-mindedness.

But this Herald… she looks at him. No, she _watches_. And that is - not worrisome, not yet. But interesting, certainly. What she sees other than a strange elvhen seemingly near ten years her senior yet with no place or people to his name…well, he knows his pride has always been his downfall, but he will not be so arrogant as to assume he can read anything behind that unwavering gaze beyond curiosity and, he hopes, fading suspicion. That is still more than any other and enough to capture his attention.

He admits he’s done little to dissuade her interest and has, to his own chagrin, found himself entertaining her inquiries in a manner perhaps less than dignified at times. She asks him questions, even when she likely knows his answer will not be to her liking - which he suspects is most of the time. He believes he answers honestly, truly - if he skirts the truth it is only by omission but he never equivocates, never sugarcoats. She seems less inclined to consider him crazed or delusional than any other Dalish he’s encountered, which is both unexpected and even a little gratifying, for all that it ultimately matters, which is little.

He supposes her background likely plays a part, or what he’s gleaned of it in their talks - a clan more open to outsiders than most and yet in need of even greater caution to avoid disaster with misplaced trust. Then there is the mage sister prone to talking to spirits even before she was made First to their Keeper, and a peculiar brother obsessed with all manner of equations and calculations likely deemed frivolous by most of her Clan, and indulged as such. Perhaps _that_ is what he is to her, another person to be indulged and protected - if not from roving bands of torch wielding townsfolk than from this makeshift encampment of devout humans as beholden to the mores of their fractured Chantry as they were before it crumbled in front of their eyes.

Of course, she is also a hunter, or a scout more accurately - a tracker and lookout in one. No doubt she’s used to watching, to searching not just for where her quarry has been and where it is now, but where it might run in future - whether stag or human or something more dangerous altogether. Her work at its core is deduction, anticipation, it is the stuff her clan relies on for its very survival. It occurs to him he might have found her before he awoke, recruited her in her dreams as he has others. In another life she would have made an excellent agent. She would have no need for suspicion then, not with him - he could tell her…well, not everything. Near enough. Though he doubts ‘near enough’ would sate her appetite for answers.

Really, her suspicion - if that is what it truly even is - is likely merely a reflex, the muscle memory of a mind as studiously trained to a purpose as the body. So it surprises him how much it lurks in his thoughts, something he worries over like a dog with an old bone. He has so rarely had the opportunity to be prey. But then he finds himself surprised by no shortage of things where Mabyn Lavellan is concerned.

Here, just now, it is the way he finds his eyes following the line of her long, lithe legs as she makes her way towards him, how he admires the delicate precision of each footfall. Or how he’s even begun to be amused by her acerbic remarks at his expense, her thin, serious little face only giving the barest hint at the humor lurking beneath even as she asks another question and another, always searching and never quite content. And still yet, the admiration he finds growing at the plain kindness that threads through her body surely as the blood that runs through her veins, that leads her to find a widow’s lost wedding ring, to place flowers on the grave of an old man’s beloved, or secure blankets and bedding against the cold for people who would as like to have run her out of their village as said hello before the Breach.

Or to declare herself the willing defender of an arrogant flat-ear who disparages her people through his pride as much as their ignorance, should their human hosts turn as they so often have in the past. 

It’s not so terribly strange to notice such things, he tells himself. He _has_ been asleep for a very long time, after all. He is very old, and rather tired, and must keep his focus, but he’s not dead - not just yet, at any rate. It’s true, perhaps he should not have indulged the remark about her grace the other day, but it’s hardly as though something as mild as that would lead anywhere. His younger self would laugh at the very thought of a simple compliment holding any sort of promise. Certainly nothing could, or would, ever come of a few friendly conversations with an _asha'len_ gifted with a quick mind and a pair of lovely grey eyes? The thought is absurd for any number of reasons beyond his ultimate aims.

So yes, she looks at him now, feet shifting to place like a dancer and back straight at attention in the Fereldan clothing she looks so out of place in, her head cocked just so. And he looks back.

“ _Aneth ara_ , _Hahren_.” The ghost of a smile that lingers and the glint in her eyes belies the sincerity of the honorific - taking the piss, is how he assumes the Grey Warden would put it. Solas is, as he is becoming accustomed to, torn between amusement and irritation. But he can find no real malice behind it and so today, the former wins out.

“ _Aneth ara_ , Herald,” he nods, a smile playing at the corners of his lips to match her own.

After all, what harm could come of it?


End file.
